Eating meat worse for environment than driving a gas guzzler
By Geoff Olson
An upcoming United Nations report pegs the world's oil, gas and mining industries as responsible for nearly two-thirds of all violations of human rights, environmental laws and international labour standards. "The extractive industries-oil, gas and mining -also account for most allegations of the worst abuses, up to and including complicity in crimes against humanity," according to the interim report. And we carbon-belching fossil fools are complicit.
The report also determined that the food and beverage industries are a distant second in the nastiness sweepstakes.
So if anyone wants to act globally and think locally, they should focus more on the gas pump than the dinner plate, right? Actually, the reverse probably holds true. Recent research at the University of Chicago indicates that gas-guzzling motor vehicles are less a factor in energy consumption and climate change than the kind of food we eat.
The researchers calculated the carbon-compound connections of both a typical vegan diet and a U.S.-style carnivorous diet. They followed the energy pathways, from farm to processing to distribution to cooking and consumption. In an article in The Guardian, Jonathon Porritt summed up the findings. "An average burger man (that is, not the outsize variety) emits the equivalent of 1.5 tonnes more CO2 every year than the standard vegan. By comparison, were you to trade in your conventional gas-guzzler for a state-of-the-art Prius hybrid, your CO2 savings would amount to little more than one tonne per year."
Porritt, program director of Forum for the Future and chairman of the U.K. Sustainable Development Commission, concludes that "each of us could make a bigger contribution to reducing emissions of greenhouse gases by becoming a vegan than by converting to an eco-friendly car."
The biggest energy consumption factor in food production involves meat. It's not just the vast amount of arable land devoted to raising food animals; and the significant amount of vegetable matter and water needed to create a single pound of animal protein. The amount of gas and oil involved in the food production of meat exceeds that of other foodstuffs. Hence the data on the eco-benefits of vegan diet versus hybrid cars.
It's also a given that meat-free diets promote better health. I'm reminded of a Tom Toles cartoon of a customer in a supermarket butcher shop, looking over a hanging beef carcass with the cuts indicated as nitrates, growth hormone, antibiotics, etc. "I think I'll have asparagus," he says, deadpan.
A mass aversion toward meat diets could and would translate into huge savings to our maxed-out health care system. As for those of us who've tried the vegan route and found it a joyless stretch of self-denial, there is still the vegetarian route, which includes eggs and dairy.
I could no more turn fully vegan than I could join Opus Dei. But it's not necessary for anyone to be guilted into the herbivore agenda. Simply passing on a burger at the next meal matters, if we're talking incremental moves by large numbers of people. Eschewing meat, even if it's only once in a while, is one of the most potent political decisions a person can make, given the human rights abuses associated with the globe-gobbling resource extraction industries, which in turn feed the chemical-dependent agribiz Meatrix.
The personal is the political, and the political is the ecological. There is no "out there." We are all linked together by the energy relations of carbon cycles, not just to one another but to all living beings we share the biosphere with. And though I've said nothing about issues of the treatment of food animals, that shades into the discussion by default.
Rock singer Chrissie Hynde is an ornery sort who's nobody's fool, and a longtime PETA member. An interviewer from MOJO magazine recently confronted her with the argument that the most militant animal welfare activists put animal rights ahead of human ones.
"That's crap. If you think slaughterhouses are fine, I'm not going to ask you about anything, because I know that fundamentally you're going to let me down_These people who try to save the world and they're meat eaters? Go back to the drawing board, guys. I don't trust any of them. They're never going to get it right."
You don't have to endorse any extreme actions by animal welfare activists to appreciate her point. And given what we now know about the web of connections between energy, ecology, climate, diet and human rights, I'd say Chrissie nailed it.
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June 9,06
Meat on hoof a big investment
To the editor:
As a meat-eating bicyclist, I have problems with Geoff Olson's stance ("Eating meat worse for environment than driving a gas guzzler," June 2).
Firstly he fails to consider the entire carbon footprint of an automobile-up to 50 per cent of the pollution cars make is produced in their manufacture.
Secondly, although I agree that cattle herds need to be reduced, that will only happen when the government imposes a strictly enforced herd reduction plan and subsidizes the industry, so that we all can afford to eat more beef. Think of all those animals that are alive out there now as an investment in food. If we don't eat them, we've wasted that investment.
Finally, I agree with what [rock musician] Chrissie Hynde said, but it can be equally applied to those who insist they need to drive to the corner store, and it fails to answer the question, i.e. what about animal activists putting animal welfare ahead of human welfare?
Donald Rennie, Vancouver
published on 06/09/2006
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We're all interconnected animals
To the editor:
I take issue with a few of the points in Donald Rennie's letter ("Meat on hoof a big investment," June 9).
First: Very few animal activists put animal issues before human issues. In fact, animal issues are human issues. You see, humans and animals, as well as plants and minerals, are all part of the interconnected web that a lot of us like to call life. For instance, world hunger is rampant mostly because the majority of the world's food is fed to farm animals to eventually be fed to (mostly affluent) humans.
Also, regarding the statement, "If we don't eat them, we've wasted that investment [on food]": animals-all of them-exist for their own purposes, many of which have squat to do with humans and their desires and conveniences.
Second: we have more than enough people eating meat and draining our healthcare dollars by way of medications for Type 2 diabetes and high cholesterol, treatments for various heart ailments and cancer-to name just a few medical services those with a meat-centred diet rely on.
Third: I would like to mention that the lower we eat on the food chain, the less of an environmental footprint we leave. Meat in any form is not low on the food chain.
Fourth: How does ensuring that we can all afford to eat more beef reduce herd size? My understanding of supply and demand-as taught to me in my Grade 9 business class-is that every person's ability to afford to eat more beef increases the demand for beef, which in turn leads to at least an attempt to increase the supply of beef-and large numbers of cattle are necessary for this supply increase. The only way to decrease herd sizes is to decrease the demand for beef.
Mr. Rennie, I realize that you, among other meat eaters, feel the need to defend your food choices; however, may I suggest that you do a bit more research into these matters before proceeding to put pen to paper again. I recommend Vegan: The New Ethics of Eating and Meat Market by Eric Markus, and Mad Cowboy and No More Bull by Howard F. Lyman.
These books can be found at the public library, and held for you upon request if they are unavailable.
M. Desilets, Vancouver
published on 06/16/2006